Marcus Hall probably won’t be doing cartwheels headed toward his first class of the fall semester at Ohio State on Wednesday, but he won’t be dreading it, either.

Now the starting right guard in OSU’s up-tempo spread offense, Hall is two years removed from seeing his collegiate career teetering at cliff’s edge. After playing extensively as a highly touted freshman in 2009, his academics went south. He needed to get his act straight.

He and coach Jim Tressel decided the best way to do that was to sit out the 2010 season, cashing in his redshirt year.

“That year, I really had to get my head right,” Hall said.

What he found was, as in playing the offensive line, there are winning techniques in classroom performance.

“I had to learn the game of school, and how to approach school,” Hall said, “like sit in the front row, and how to actually study.

“I had to get straight with school. Now it’s nowhere near as hard as it was. I was the one making it hard in the first place.”

That new approach to learning apparently has paid dividends for Hall on the practice field, too. Although he started the first five games last year, he was moved back to second team after suspended left tackle Mike Adams returned, causing a shuffle of the starting line. But Hall took the starting spot at right guard in the spring when last year’s right guard, Jack Mewhort, was moved out to left tackle to replace Adams, who is now in the NFL.

Coach Urban Meyer’s new offensive line coach, Ed Warinner, had heard of Hall before he moved from Notre Dame to the Buckeyes in January. Hall, after all, had been a blue-chip prospect at Cleveland Glenville and had played in the U.S. Army All-American game after his senior season.

“Marcus has always had some abilities,” Warinner said during the spring. “He had some setbacks here in the past, as I understand. But now he’s got a clean slate, a fresh start. He’s rolling along, and I see progress.”

This month, Hall picked up right where he left off in the spring.

“Camp has been going great,” he said.

One reason is his “sit in the front row” attitude toward anyone doing the teaching.

“I’m just learning every day,” Hall said. “I’m trying to be like a sponge, take in everything the coaches give me, like coach Warinner, coach Urban.

“We’ve been learning this whole camp because we have this new offense. I feel like we got a really good start with this offense in spring ball. Now we’re just trying to perfect it.”

Hall said he knows there’s a lot going on from play to play behind him in the backfield. It’s almost like a ballet as quarterback Braxton Miller and others execute zone-read options and such.

“When I watch film, that’s what it looks like,” Hall said. “But I never know what’s going on behind me or who has the ball. Up front, we’re always banging.”

The linemen always are on the move, too, in the new offense. That’s why, in the offseason, strength and conditioning coach Mickey Marotti ordered Hall to drop about 20 pounds from his playing weight of 330 or so last season. Hall did as he was told and is staying in the 310 to 315 realm, something else that is helping him stay in the front row on the offense.

“We are running a lot more,” Hall explained, “so we had to get in a lot better shape.”